I am trying not to lose hope, but it’s getting harder. It’s been a month since my interview. They told me that they didn’t want to drag the interview/hiring process out. I always assumed I’d hear something either way because I got the interview through one of my brother’s friends; that’s the only reason I haven’t completely lost hope.

I know that I shouldn’t have focused solely on this one interview, but the timing was just So Perfect; it felt like fate. And now fate is letting me down and it hurts more somehow. Is it too much to ask for the universe to just help me out for once in my fucking life?

Anyways…

The All-Star Game is on my TV right now. Manny Machado’s uniform top is too big; I find that really annoying. Oh good, a country singer doing “God Bless America” where “Take Me Out To the Ballgame” is supposed to go – stop making everything about the fucking troops! (Newsflash, U.S. Army, Independence Day isn’t fucking about you! Sorry, those Army commercials have been driving me nuts.) I don’t usually care about All-Star Game uniforms, but the hats are rad 🙂 And I love the genius at Fox who just played the WKRP in Cincinnati theme song.

There, that’s just the right mix of depression and weird stream of consciousness for my blog.

I just learned something remarkable: Ryan Vogelsong, professional pitcher for the San Francisco Giants, went to Octorara fucking High School. I get that this is not remarkable to most people, but you’ve got to understand that I was thisclose to going to Octorara. The Octorara school district encompasses the town that I technically grew up in (in the sense that our address was Cochranville). I am floored, you guys.

I think what’s weirdest to me, though, is that I only learned of this tonight. I knew that Vogelsong went to Kutztown and had briefly been in the Phillies’ system, but I’d had no idea that he and I had been fucking neighbors growing up. (Neighbors is probably stretching it, but you get the idea.) If I had gone to Octorara, he and I would’ve had one overlapping year of high school (his senior year/my freshman year). And here it is, 20 years later, and he couldn’t make it through six innings because the Phillies hit two home runs (thank you, Ryan Howard and Cody Asche).

I thought I would watch this whole game, but now I’m not so sure. I am definitely going to stop writing this post, though.

I’m not the only person who immediately starts thinking about my birthday on June 1 and I have the emails to prove it. I got Happy Birthday emails (and offers) from Victoria’s Secret, DSW, and Red Robin yesterday. It’s not much, but I appreciate any indication that I’m not completely insane for having a birthday-related existential crisis three weeks before my birthday. (I have no recollection of ever giving Victoria’s Secret my date of birth, though, so that’s kind of disturbing.)

I got very excited when I heard Dashboard Confessional on my ride home this evening. But, after my initial excitement, I found myself yelling “it’s still not Brand New, though” at the radio. Still, I was glad to hear “Hands Down.”

The last time I remember hearing Brand New on SiriusXM I was driving to the job I quit before I started grad school. That was a long time ago. Meanwhile, Alt Nation is shoving new bands down my throat so hard that I get sick of them within two weeks (see: Gemini Club, Skaters, and Knox Hamilton; I’ve started turning the channel every time the Junior Prom song comes on just so I don’t get sick of it too quickly). There’s got to be a happy medium. I think a channel devoted to 2000s alt rock (think Lithium meets Pop2K) would be a good place to start.

I stopped at Wawa for gas on my way home this evening. It took me an hour to get there. (I normally make it all the way home in an hour. And Wawa is much closer to my office.) You guys know I adore Wawa, but I will not be doing that again.

I’m so used to having Wawas conveniently located everywhere that it confuses me that I have to go out of my way to get to them down here. Why can’t Wawa just be everywhere already?

You know you’re getting burned out on your job when you freak out every time you hear the guy in the cube behind you breathe. (In my defense, the guy breathes unbelievably loudly. Like, I’m pretty sure he has some sort of significant health problem because healthy people don’t breathe that audibly.) And maybe “freak out” is the wrong verb; “cringe” might be better. I mean, I’m not yelling at this guy for breathing or anything like that.

These are the things I think about when I’m at work. Is it any wonder that watching baseball during my lunch is the highlight of my day?

I was watching TV tonight and I saw a commercial for Lancaster Soft Cremes. It freaked me out because here I am in Florida and there’s a voice on my TV saying the word “Lancaster” repeatedly and, even more shocking, pronouncing it correctly. (You probably have to be from PA to understand why I have such a thing about the pronunciation of “Lancaster.”)

It turns out that this candy is a Hershey’s product, so it makes sense that they’d get someone who knows how to pronounce “Lancaster” properly, but I was still surprised. Also, I totally have to try that candy. (Not because the commercial says “Lancaster” correctly, but because I friggin’ love caramel.)